That seems better reasoned - you could expand on it and explain why this is a problem, how it should be avoided, how language packages should be integrated with system packages, etc. That would make for very interesting reading.

I'm wondering if a 'new' age of sysadmin is coming along that will basically build a vm-image of an application node, with the OS built using chef/puppet/etc, so that the host packages are as few as possible. Just a thought.